[SOLVED] Installing printer Brother MFC-6800 - "Software index ..."

CUPS or LPR? deb or rpm? I don't really know what this means (other than I know what CUPS is)... but based on what I've been reading, it seems people like deb better than rpm, and CUPS better than LPR. But apparently Brother doesn't offer the PPD file for the model of printer I have, as you can see here. So I followed the instructions here for LPR, I believe (though I don't know how to check) that I"ve properly installed ia32-libs, I've downloaded the deb LPR driver, and then I've tried a couple differnet thingson step 4, but I seem to have messed it all up.

I did two separate things, to the best of my knowledge. First, I just clicked the driver and tried to install it that way. That gave me this error message:

Second, I tried to follow the brother instructions more directly, and typed the following in the command line:

At this point I don't really know what's going on. I'm not aware of the Synaptic Package Manager, and searching for it online returns things about Ubuntu. I don't know how to check the file permissions/correctness of the file "/etc/apt/sources.list". I also don't know what to do with the error messages from terminal, though I guess I could try and build the directory /etc/init.d/lpd, but I think my problems are bigger than that...

1) I have cups installed.2) It said my printer didn't have a driver.3) I downloaded the appropriate cupswrapper driver.4) I tried opening the driver. I got the following error message:

5) I tried to follow the appropriate brother cupswrapper instructions. They suggested I do two things:(a) Install ia32-libs or lib32stdc++ (I follow the "Debian 64 pre-install requirements"). I didn't do this (yet) because last time I tried to install ia32-libs, everything got messed up.(b) type the followin in Terminal: "ln -s /etc/init.d/cupsys /etc/init.d/lpd". I did, and I got the following error mesage:

“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.” - Eduardo Hughes Galeano

The errors seems to be in their Debian package (maybe it is not up-to-date with the new multiarch?).

In any case, I don't think trying that installer will hurt anything. It's just a bash script and looks to be pretty straight forward based on a quick scroll through it. It's going to install ia32-libs, though. Just so you are aware. This has been known to cause some minor headaches with #! because it removes some #! related packages. You can just reinstall these onces it's complete.

“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.” - Eduardo Hughes Galeano

hey! just spent the past couple hours working on and typing a long reply, and then I accidentally hit ctrl+q, destroying it all... I will try my best to remember everything I wrote/did. EDIT: I certainly can't remember everything about the brother installer...

annoyingbeggar, I tried the brother installer. I ran into two errors. I forget the first, but the installer kept running after that. The second (where things stopped) was that "lpr" was not a valid command... Is this enough information to help me with, or should I go through the process again and see what happens?

hinto, I tried using CUPS with that 64-bit driver, and it didn't work. It gave the below error message when I used the add printer option in CUPS via localhost 631. The URLS you provided, if I follow the instructions present, suggest I use sane-utils. This doesn't seem to be what you're suggesting I do, is it?

I actually was able (this time in CUPS) to select a Brother MFC-6800 option... that's when I ran into the same issues as the thread bigbenaugust posted. Currently running through the steps from that thread.